revolt against the notion that so
gracious a thing could be grotesque. Yet is this our mature thought?
Do not the facts certify that from this world's unregenerate standpoint
manliness is grotesque? Was not Christ looked upon as mad? Did not
his ideas of manliness appear as nothing other than fantastic, when he
would substitute love for might, meekness for braggadocio, and purity
of heart for an omnipresent sensuality? What were his ideals of
manhood but battling with windmills or being enamored of a myth?
Tested by standards of this world's make, his notions and conduct were
sheerly fantastic. As recorded on one occasion, "They laughed him to
scorn;" and this they did many another time, covertly or openly.
Indeed, grasping the state of civilization as then existing, and
comprehending Christ's non-earthly idea of what a gentleman was, we can
not be slow to perceive how ludicrous this conception would be to the
Roman world. Tall dreams seem madness. Hamlet's feigned madness
puzzles us even yet. Many an auditor heard Columbus with a smile
ill-concealed behind his beard. All high ideality sounds a madman's
babble. To see a true life live truly will strike many as a jest, and
others as pathos too deep for sobs.

Don Quixote conceived a man ought to live for virtue. To be
self-dedicated to the help of others; to be courageous as an army which
had never met defeat; to be self-forgetful, so that hunger, pain,
thirst, fatigue, become trifles; to have love become absorbing; to fill
the mind's unfathomed sky with dreams outshining dawns; to count honor
to be so much more than life, as that honor is all and life is naught;
to interpret all men and women at their best, and so to expect good and
not suspicion evil; to meet all men on the high level of manhood; and
to love God with such persistency and eagerness as that the soul's
solitudes are peopled with him as by a host,--if this be not a
gentleman, we have misconceived the species. Read this history of his
early and later battles for right, and you will not find an impurity of
word, suggestion, thought. God's lilies are not cleaner. I confess
that the knight's love for Dulcinea del Tobosa moves me to tears. I
never can smile or jest at him when his heart and lips hold with fealty
to an ideal love. His love created her. He found her a clod, but
flung her into the sky and made her a star. Is not this love's uniform
history? Blinded, not of lust or ambition, but